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Reports have surfaced about another, more extreme round of layoffs at Warhammer Online studio Mythic Entertainment. This article reveals the nature of those reports, response from Mythic and some commentary from MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood.

On Tuesday, Electronic Arts announced that Mythic’s Warhammer Online ended the third quarter of 2008 with over 300K subscribers from North America and Europe. This number, which is significantly lower than the 1.5 million units sold to retailers (not units purchased by the public, stock purchased by retailers) for launch, and the 750,000 registered players reported back in October (albeit these numbers included Australia as well), is still above the 250,000 number that had been previously thrown around.

This announcement, combined with the reports of layoffs in late January that saw the company lay off “21 customer service employees, half of QA and all of the playtest group”, has led some players to speculate that more cuts, and perhaps even the demise of the game itself are on the horizon.

Yesterday, according to reports at joystiq.com, at least a part of those predictions seem to be coming true. Joystiq cites “several well placed sources” when it writes that a second round of layoffs has taken place, this time taking out some of the development staff and perhaps even some Senior Designers. The report puts the number of layoffs at “between 60 and 130” people.

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Oh no, we got ourselves a code RED ppl, the "B" word has been mentioned which is bound to be followed by the "W" word, brace yourselves for incoming Flames and endless pointless arguments over who's gotta a bigger phalic symbol.

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"recession" is being a nice excuse for many people, but i don't see it in Blizzard or CCP.

WAR has failed. Bugs aren't fixed, RVR is crap, the downfall is inevitable and obvious.

Maybe Devs will realize people don't want WoW like MMOs. If people want a game formulated on WoW they will play WoW. Devs should try to produce a real NEXT GEN MMO, and not all these shotty shallow games.

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This could be the start of a catch 22 situation, EA cut jobs, WAR players panic and leave, EA forced to cut more jobs due to loss of revenue, more WAR players panic and leave, etc.

Though an MMO doesn't need more than 100 people working on it, going live with a 400 strong team seems crazy to me, I'm not aware of any other MMO, WoW included, that employs that many people for one project.

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MMO's are going to do well during the recession as they are a cheaper and more consistent form of entertainment than going to a bar, cinema etc. The escapism that virtual worlds provide should not be underestimated during such a period. The cold hard facts are that WAR did not to live up to the hype and is suffering as a result.

I've always been of the opinion that PvP alone is not enough to sustain an MMO. Killing players hour on hour, day after day gets old pretty quick. MMO's are not like normal games - they have huge demands put upon them by players to keep them entertained for sustained periods. From what I've heard about WAR, it seems there is not enough variation to fill this requirement.

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I would say that huge part of issue with WO is crappy engine. Atleast 1/2 of my guild in WO left the game after 1st month (most of the ppl had max lv) becasue terible game performance in meny parts of the game esp in some scenarios, TOWNS, and during huge RvR.

Thing is if you have anything beter than 8xxx like 2xx or 9800gx2 cards (i think situation was simlar for ati) you will have performance worse than on some 3-4 year old GPU....

Seriously no mater how good the game is, if you cant play it, you wont pay for the game. Its simple as that. I hope they will fix this some day and i can come back to WO, but as it is right now game is unplayable, and extremly depresing esp if you have hardware that can run Crysis in 1920x1080 with AA and AS on and maxed at around 40-50fps or over 70fps in lower resolutions....

And for example WO runs 20fps in Altdorf.... setings dont mater you can max the setings or set them to min or even force 16bit color fps is always the same...

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Originally posted by Khebeln

I would say that huge part of issue with WO is crappy engine. Atleast 1/2 of my guild in WO left the game after 1st month (most of the ppl had max lv) becasue terible game performance in meny parts of the game esp in some scenarios, TOWNS, and during huge RvR.

Thing is if you have anything beter than 8xxx like 2xx or 9800gx2 cards (i think situation was simlar for ati) you will have performance worse than on some 3-4 year old GPU....

Seriously no mater how good the game is, if you cant play it, you wont pay for the game. Its simple as that. I hope they will fix this some day and i can come back to WO, but as it is right now game is unplayable, and extremly depresing esp if you have hardware that can run Crysis in 1920x1080 with AA and AS on and maxed at around 40-50fps or over 70fps in lower resolutions....

And for example WO runs 20fps in Altdorf.... setings dont mater you can max the setings or set them to min or even force 16bit color fps is always the same...

They should make proper engine before they start making the game...

I can give you the answer why the game runs like crap, its CPU impactive now GPU impactive, most of those highpowered Vid cards ( like my 4870 X2 ) was never utilized fully.

WAR failed in 2 ways .... A very weak seige mechanic and lets face it PvE raiding is a good way to keep people playing ( esp if the mobs were contested and order vs chaos would have been crazy ).

they had crappy ideas for both of those and thats why its in the toilet.

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Stradden, I know your trying to be diplomatic here but saying that this isn't a failure is ridiculous. Losing this many employees and so many subs in such a short time is catastrophic for a huge budget MMO like War.

By all account Warhammer is a failure, not because they lose money (they might not), but because they didn't even come close to their goals and hype. Now, that doesn't mean things won't ever get better, but for now... Cross your fingers I guess

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That much i know that the issue is CPU related, but thats only part of the problem. The real isssu is that the game is way to much cpu dpependend and instead of utilizing big part of cpu calculations on the gpu the do it on cpu and creating botleneck at the same time...

Atm i use Intel Core2 Quad Q9650 3,00 GHz Overclocked with water cooling to 4Ghz....

I dont think my CPU is the real issue here. As example i tryed the game on 3 GPU. 9600GT 9800GX2 and 280. I had same crapy fps on the 2 last ones even tho they where few times more powerfull.

To make things funy i had 60-100 fps on 9600GT... now someone tell me its not bad engine. I can add that i tryed it on 3 difrent MB most typed of drivers available and like 40-50 crazy tricks that forced the game to run in unsupported modes through 3rd party programs. Nothing helped.

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Originally posted by Myrdek

Stradden, I know your trying to be diplomatic here but saying that this isn't a failure is ridiculous. Losing this many employees and so many subs in such a short time is catastrophic for a huge budget MMO like War.

By all account Warhammer is a failure, not because they lose money (they might not), but because they didn't even come close to their goals and hype. Now, that doesn't mean things won't ever get better, but for now... Cross your fingers I guess

Totally agree. I really wnted to see WAR survive but unfortunately barring a miracle it will not survive the year.

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"recession" is being a nice excuse for many people, but i don't see it in Blizzard or CCP.

WAR has failed. Bugs aren't fixed, RVR is crap, the downfall is inevitable and obvious.

Well, regardless of your opinions of the game, companies do lay off people even if they are profitable. My company was profitable last quarter but because all stocks are taking a hit, they laid people off.

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Originally posted by SaintViktor

Originally posted by Myrdek

Stradden, I know your trying to be diplomatic here but saying that this isn't a failure is ridiculous. Losing this many employees and so many subs in such a short time is catastrophic for a huge budget MMO like War.

By all account Warhammer is a failure, not because they lose money (they might not), but because they didn't even come close to their goals and hype. Now, that doesn't mean things won't ever get better, but for now... Cross your fingers I guess

Totally agree. I really wnted to see WAR survive but unfortunately barring a miracle it will not survive the year.

I'm no MMO expert, and i agree it doesnt have the gaudy numbers that WoW has, but at 250k, how many subs do think an MMO needs to survive? How many subs do other current MMOs have?

I just cant see them shutting down within a year with a base of 250k, especially considering they just launched in Russia (last week?)

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I don't think 300k is anywhere near a "door closing" number. People just think a game has to have WoW numbers to be a success. Truth is, WAR has subscriber numbers as good as any western MMO besides WOW. I'll be glad when that obsolete pile of garbage starts it's inevitable decline. They can only polish that old turd for so many years... When it's numbers aren't throwing off everyone's expectations, maybe we can all start talking about sub numbers reasonably again.

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"recession" is being a nice excuse for many people, but i don't see it in Blizzard or CCP.

WAR has failed. Bugs aren't fixed, RVR is crap, the downfall is inevitable and obvious.

Mr. Hawking......

Blizzard has laid off Twice, In June 08 and in August 08....they are scehduled to lay off again in April. Google it.

CCP has ran a skeleton crew since launch, they also currently have 3/4 of WARs subscribers. Grab a clue before you speak.

yet wow increases its subscriber numbers and so does eve.

eve was announced not to be easy to get into. Eve was never intended to be a massive mmo like most others. they did not hype their game much less falsely advertize it. They had their own official fourms from the start and had confidence in their product. While not big in numbers. Eve is one of the few mmos that have retained its subscribers and has grown.

mythic and its precious mark Jacobs Lied about their product. They refused to make official forums (til now well not yet)because they knew their product was flawed and NOT ready . They hide their problems with future promises and lies. They depended on Fansites to be baised to their favor. They didnt want potential buyers to be turned off if they had official fourms swamped with unhappy players speaking bad about all the problem the game currently has.

yet still they hpyed alot of people due to ip involved wich is the warhammer ip. they had a huge amount of players at the start and now they lost about 60% in a few months, infact more because that was the last quater of last year its not including jan and feb of this year. the truth is their numbers will continue to decline.

ccp started small with their game eve. over the years it grew. it got better. its getting more stable. when a big pvp war is comming up they quickly send resorces in the area where its gonna happen to allow a less laggy battle. before it was not like that and you would end up lagging to hell on a huge scale battle. they have been working on every concern their player base has.

not mythic. they have been ignoring many issues. They have not made anything to retain the lvl cap players. or atleast fix many issues of the little end game they have. They just expected everyone to fill up their tome of whatever thinking it will cover up till they can add more stuff.

yep 2 new classes are comming, which have been tested in beta, then removed and now are finally being implamented. Thye mention somthing that wont be out till summer which is their new area. as the game is. till summer is to damn long for the new part.Mythic is hypeing an event in hopes to retain and swell their numbers.